Alisa Feng

Ms. Wilson

February 26, 2014

AP Literature and Composition

Personal Reflection

Concrete experience

o You will probably start by describing what you did as it relates to any part of the Project.

For the AP Literature and Composition final project, I read two books written by Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns) and analyzed the social and political implications of his writing. As I am not particularly fluent in politics, this required a considerable amount of research on my part in order to fully comprehend Hosseini’s addressment of social/political issues in context of Afghanistan’s political turmoil during the past four decades. Aside from the outside research, Hosseini’s writing style and plot detail made the two books I chose relatively easy to read and I found it to be an enjoyable experience.

I am also pleased with my overall presentation. It was not perfect but it was one that I felt was representative of the preparations I had made for it. I tried to focus on the specific literary techniques and stylistic effects that Hosseini used in his novels to create meaning but found myself running out of time while presenting. As a result, my explication of the last few slides of my presentation-- which mostly involved Hosseini’s literary devices-- was not as thorough as I would have liked it to be. Looking back, I also realized that most of my evidence stemmed from The Kite Runner; perhaps it would have been more effective to utilize more passages/quotes/etc. from A Thousand Splendid Suns as well. However, I believe this was because I had read The Kite Runner first and had already developed many of my ideas and conclusions surrounding Hosseini’s style and message before I started reading my second book. In observing other presentations, I liked many of the participation activities my classmates conducted (notably Sri’s which involved a good deal of independent self-reflection) as well as the hooks many of them came up with; I realized the introduction to my presentation was rather lackluster in comparison. Nonetheless, though my presentation was not flawless, I still believe that it-- as well as the preparations/essays/assignments leading up to the final presentation--  was a rewarding learning experience.

This assignment focused predominantly on the connection between literary devices and the thematic messages they convey, something that is a large portion of the AP exam but also something that I had not given too much thought to before. Usually in my analysis of passages, I tend to focus on either the literary devices used and the effects they create or the thematic material of the passage. For a long time I was convinced that the “effects created by literary devices” was synonymous with the “meaning created by literary devices”; this project prove me wrong as it forced me to analyze the devices used on a deeper level and to discover the messages that had been hidden within them. For example, Hosseini does not include the rape of Hassan simply as a plot detail but as an allegory for the rape of Afghanistan. Here, an allegory is used not just for literature’s sake but instead for the purpose compacting a grand political scheme into a human experience that would be more easily understood by the general politically-uneducated public. Awareness to the details included by authors such as this will definitely help me during the AP Exam which involves an incredible amount of analysis.

As far as my remaining concerns regarding the AP Exam are, I think my biggest weakness will be on the multiple choice section. This project and this course in general have prepared me for the essays that will show up but I still struggle with the “technical” side of literature (ex. identifying poetic forms, etc) but I will continue to study these in third trimester. However, I do feel well-prepared for the essays on the exam; aside from a focus on thematic material and literary devices, the AP Open Prompts that were involved in this project have also helped me with time management during essay-writing. In hindsight, I realized that this probably would have been even more effective if I had taken pencil to paper during the 40minutes I gave myself for each essay as opposed to typing it on a computer (I type much faster than I write) but this was still very helpful. It has made me realize that I often spend too much time on body paragraphs and the specific wording of passages rather than simply getting the point across and, for the first essay, this resulted in a lacking conclusion. However, I have improved considerably since the first timed essay I had written in this class and will hopefully continue to improve in the weeks leading up to the now-slightly-less-terrifying AP Exam.